


gonna cut you down

by Inkarnadyne



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hunter!Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 05:14:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inkarnadyne/pseuds/Inkarnadyne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In something that some would call poetic justice, and Stiles would misname as irony, Beacon Hills burns to the ground. He supposes it was sort of inevitable, a small California town filled with too many dark things, and too many people with darker hearts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	gonna cut you down

In something that some would call poetic justice, and Stiles would misname as irony, Beacon Hills burns to the ground. He supposes it was sort of inevitable, a small California town filled with too many dark things, and too many people with darker hearts.

 

Derek, as it turns out, wasn't that bad a guy after all. But it didn't save him. Stiles doesn't think he’ll ever be able to forget it, the corpse hanging high, the jagged spiral cut into his chest, the ruined tatters of his face.

Scott, Scott believed in true love, had ever since the day he’d met Allison. It hadn't saved him, but at least he’d gotten to die for her. Stiles figures that, in a way, he would have wanted that, to go out protecting someone he loved.

It was probably better that way, that Scott was gone first. Allison took it in the same way she’d taken her mom’s death. Brief, wrecked tears, and then a steel wire that kept her shoulders back and her spine straight and her arrows flying true. The screaming had been the worst when she’d gone. Stiles swears he can hear it sometimes, and he’s sure Chris can, too.

It was Erica that started the fire that set the whole town ablaze. Stiles doesn't know how, but he knows why. The smell of burnt flesh and singed fur settled over the town like a reeking fog for days.

He doesn't know where Lydia went, what happened to her, or Jackson, Boyd or Isaac, Finstock or Greenberg or Danny. He’s not sure he wants to. There are so many things he wishes he could forget, and so he acts like a sponge when Chris talks, he tries to soak in every single fact, every facet of knowledge the Argent is willing to share in the hopes that it might take up more space, that it might force out the other memories.

They sleep in shitty motels with bars on the windows. Stiles wears bulky hoodies and sleeps with a pistol under his pillow. Chris tells him not to be an idiot, and to at least keep the safety on. Stiles nods and promises that he will, but the thumbs the tiny switch off every time he shuts his eyes.

They barely sleep.

They train.

They oddest part is how much they learn from each other. Chris Argent is a werewolf hunter, he knows the lore, knows the fact from the fiction and knows the tech. He can strip down and rebuild a pistol in nothing flat.

They almost get carjacked once, just outside Detroit when they’re still driving Argent’s slick SUV. Stiles had been ready to piss himself when Chris reached over, grabbed the top of the glock and with a quick press of fingers the pistol all but fell apart in his hands. He’d chucked the pieces back into the street and driven off like they’d only been stopped for a red light.

( Stiles knows that trick now, and itches for a chance to try it out for his own.)

But Stiles knows things, too. Argent’s always lived on the right side of the law (Stiles tried to argue this once, but Chris had asked him to name a single law protecting the rights of werewolves and Stiles had been forced to shut up, it had been an unpleasant feeling) Stiles has, too, but he’d spent years around people who hadn’t. He’d spent sleepless nights rifling through his father’s files, spent after-school afternoons in lock-up, pestering the criminal’s with whatever questions his hopped up adolescent brain could think of. He’d retained more knowledge than he’d been aware of.

So when they need petty cash, or fake ID’s, or new wheels it’s Stiles that gets to teach, to lay out the rules. Chris, grudgingly, follows.

( “No, no, the other wire. Yeah, that one. Twist ‘em together. No, man, you gotta twist. Good, good, now get in.”

And maybe it’s stupid to jack a mustang for their first, but sometimes Stiles wants to make stupid teenage mistakes, he’s seventeen for Christ’s sake, and sometimes Chris looks at him a little too long and just lets him make the bad decisions for them.)

 

Most days, Stiles is a good shot. He’s known how to handle a gun for years, known how to aim, how to shoot, and how to not accidentally spray his own brain matter against the wall. Chris has the good grace to be a little surprised when Stiles picks off the first round of bottles they’d set up along a treeline with only a few stray shots. He gets better, gets quicker and smarter.

( But some days everything’s different. Some days Argent lays a hand on his shoulder, points out a target and Stiles’s hearing must go funny, because it’s not Chris he’s hearing. His dad had smelled a little like leather and gun oil, too. Had taught him how to shoot. Some days Stiles’s hands shake so bad he can barely fit his palms around the grip, can’t get his fingers to find the trigger.)

Botany hasn't exactly been a subject Stiles ever had a vested interest in, but he listens, and he learns. Argent brings out green leaves, purple petals. Mountain Ash and mistletoe, wolfsbane.

( He remembers that first one, and the last one, remembers the grit in his fingers and the tang on his tongue, and it’s the feelings that get him, the surge of power and the drain of despair.)

They've been tracking the stragglers from the alpha pack across the country, catch up with them somewhere on the opposite coast, Virginia forests. Stiles has fired a gun before, but this is the first time he really feels the kick, feels the pistol jerk back in his hands. This is the first time the crack of the gunshot isn’t followed by breaking glass. There’s something like a wet thud, and then a howl.

Chris is right beside him, then darting around him, and Stiles just barely catches the glint of silver in the moonlight. It was on two legs when Stiles had fired, but there’s four now, gnashing teeth and bristling fur (and redredbloodred eyes) and Chris is quick with the knife. 

( He’s always quick. Stiles remembers the cuts he needs to make, the cuts Chris told him about, the sharp lines on rough diagrams, but his hands just shake and he can’t even get a grip on the knife, so Chris just pushes him aside and does it all. Stiles gets himself together in time to grab the shovel.)

That’s one down and four more to go. Stiles doesn't know what’s going to happen after, but he figures they’ll work something out, find some new monster to hunt, some new demon to chase so they can ignore the ones riding their backs. They've got to keep running.

**Author's Note:**

> Because Jinxii wanted Chris Argent and Stiles being hunters.


End file.
